#lakounou

[eachbodyeastflatbush]

Community Crafting: A Story

One small, quiet boy, with skin as dark as my father’s entered the room. He ate a few cookies before mumbling, "I want to make a flower." I obliged his request by placing wire around his head, fitting him for a crown, not daring to pretend he would ever be a king. I showed him how to attach the flowers and he was set on his way. He quietly worked on his floral crown for about 45 minutes before he finished in silence and filled up his snack plate with more cheese puffs. I remarked how wonderful his crown looked and held up a compact mirror for him to look into. He stared at his reflection, so satisfied and happy with what he had created and how it was resting on his head. I asked him if he made it with a wish in mind. He nodded yes. 

[eachbodyeastflatbush]

Reportage

How do we bear witness? How do we commit to working against the abstraction of amnesia and the pervasive silence of ignorance? How do we make art that seeks to count the bones, hold them in hand, and knock them against each other to make music? What songs must we sing? What does it mean to report back? To call? To respond? Who is keeping record?

[eachbodyeastflatbush]

Community Crafting

In the Haitian countryside there has been a historic practice of plasaj, a form of conjugal union in Haiti. Neither common law marriage or concubinage, it calls for elaborate rituals associated with Vodou practices, often marked by abundant floral arrangements. Plasaj asks its participants to decide together what their conditions for relation will be. The question becomes: How are we going to be together so that we both can live? This is a strategy of living in a daily, sustainable way, as opposed to surviving, which is an exercise of emergency. How do we live every single day? How does that help us take care of our bodies? What are the conditions we agree to in order to do that?

[eachbodyeastflatbush]

Field Notes

In 2017, there are so many new and changing threats to health and wellness. What health issues are most affecting the lives and bodies of Haitian community members in East Flatbush today? What are their challenges in dealing with those issues? What roles do language and economic status play in that? How are younger people affected by health and wellness issues? Do they find themselves being primary caretakers for the adults in their lives because they can translate between English and Kreyol? Are they dealing with health issues or questions that they can’t tell their families about because of cultural stigmas?

Field Notes will take on these questions in October 2017.

[eachbodyeastflatbush]

We are not all living. Breathing, yes. Walking, menwi. But zombies can do that. This is not impressive. And yet each body is a miracle: the dust we came from; the specs of dust we are, to which we shall return. My God, live! You must practice. Attend to the body each day. Lay it to rest each night. Because it can be taken from you. It can be stolen.

Yves, Good Blood